A couple of shots taken on the only good days we had this year. One of an absolutley flat calm day out to the wind farm off Walney Cumbria and the others of Fingles Cave Staffa taken whilst on a circum navigation of Mull, 120 miles of perfect conditions. Unfortunatley most of this season out on my own so no action shots or even pictures of the boat underway.

For me, it was probably a few weeks ago when we decided that the diving wasn't worth it and headed out to look for whales instead (actually more of an excuse to run the boats a bit than anything.)

Made a stop at Moss Landing (bathroom break for a few folks on the other boats), ogled a couple of pirate ships that were selling rides, then left the other two boats to do a circuitous route back to Monterey (the other boats were going to head straight back to fire up the BBQ.)

A couple of miles out, I ran across a pair of Humpbacks, so I radioed the other two boats with a position and settled back to watch. The whales were apparently feeding, as they surfaced in a sort of square pattern, a hundred or so yards on a side. The other two boats arrived, and we just drifted as the whales circled us, sometimes close, sometimes further away. After about ten minutes, they had blown twice, when they did a third, one slightly behind the other. They broke the surface in unison, spouted, dropped under, then two tails raised up and dropped out of sight as they sounded, all in choreographed perfection.

I looked over at the other boat driver, and said "We should leave now, 'cause it isn't going to get any better than that." He agreed, and we headed back to the ramp to get some food of our own.